Science Advisor, John Holdren: “Lessening our global dependence
on fossil fuels and increasing energy production from renewable resources is
vital in reducing the harmful effects of climate change, said Holdren. …
“It’s [global warming] actually lulled people into a degree of complacency about
this problem,” Holdren said, calling the term a “dangerous misnomer.” Climate
data on increases in floods, droughts, heat waves, pest outbreaks,
typhoons and hurricanes of the largest categories, among several factors, show
the pattern of what is actually happening to the Earth— not just
what you would expect to happen if global climate change was the
cause, said Holdren.” (from the Northwestern University Medill School
report “Global warming picking up steam, Obama top science adviser says”
2010/04/28. [http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=163838])
Too bad he ignores the data showing what is actually happening.

Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu: “in the Midwest, the
temperature will increase 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit on average. With hotter
summers, that means that during the growing season, the soil moisture
will decrease by 20 to 30 percent. Now, if you take that at face value, then the
great agricultural machinery of the U.S. is at risk, with huge economic
consequences.”

“Heat-related
deaths, the spread of infectious diseases and the threat of natural disasters
in Chicago could skyrocket in the coming decades unless greenhouse gas
emissions are curbed
… In July 1995, an extreme heat wave hit Chicago, killing over 750
people and hospitalizing thousands more. Projections from the Chicago
Climate Task-Force show that heat waves as severe as the 1995 event
could occur as frequently as every other year by the end of the century.”

“There’s
no doubt among mainstream scientists that climate is changing and that
we’re contributing to it,” said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of
the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard
University Medical School. “I really think that there’s a deep down
emotional desire to think this evolving instability in the climate and
its potential consequences for our health, for the global community, for
politics is not really happening. But it’s very real.”

They present the following
figure as the expected future due to increased CO2.

They
mention a deadly July 1995 heat wave. The following figure shows that July
temperatures have been declining since the 1930s.

A 1997 study of the 1995 heat
wave, reported in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society [http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/geo622/paper_heatwave_Karl1997.pdf]
states: “The data would
suggest that trends of Tap in Chicago are increasing at an appreciably
faster rate near the time of the daily maximum temperature compared with
times near the minimum, but this is likely to be at least partially, if
not fully, due to a change from the HO-63 to the HO-83 instrument that the
National Weather Service introduced at all of its primary stations in
throughout much of the 1980s. … the severity of the heat wave during 1995
was quite rare”

The following figure is from a
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences report in 2003 (Davis et
al, “Changing Heat-Related Mortality in the United States” [http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2003/6336/6336.html]).
The figure shows annual heat-related excess mortality by decade (Each
histogram bar indicates a different decade: from left to right, 1960s-1970s,
1980-1989, and 1990-1998.) The figure shown here shows the Chicago data
(CHI). The report states: “In
19 of our 28 study cities, total annual heat-related (population-adjusted)
mortality was statistically significantly lower in the 1990s than in our
1960s-1970s decade”

“While
average global temperatures rose about 0.74 degrees Celsius during the
past century, the U.S. Midwest has experienced a noticeable slump in
summer temperatures in recent decades … the recent cool temperatures seem to be part of a steady
long-term decline in summertime highs in Chicago”

“Changnon
suggested that fewer hot days and more precipitation are linked,
because humid air warms more slowly than dry air does. One likely source
of the extra moisture is the region’s agriculture. Plants pump vast
amounts of water from surface soil into the atmosphere as they grow, and
thirsty row crops such as corn and soybeans are much more prevalent in
the region these days — about 97 percent of farmland is planted in those
crops now, versus about 57 percent in the 1930s”

“Even
if much of the extra summer rainfall in the Midwest derives from
water in local soils, the original source of that moisture might be an
irrigation spigot somewhere on the Great Plains. A rapid rise in
irrigation in that region apparently has boosted precipitation downwind
in the Midwest”

The figure includes a linear
trend and confidence interval of the trend (0.019 +/- 0.061 deg./decade).
There is no statistically significant trend in annual average temperature.

Agriculture

Stephen Chu says the “great agricultural machinery of
the U.S. is at risk” due to global warming. An Agronomy Journal report
[http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/100/Supplement_3/S-79]
states: “The dramatic
increases in corn yield that occurred since thefounding of ASA in
1907 occurred almost entirely in the secondhalf of the 20th
century”. The following figure is from that report showing corn and
soybean yields per acre for Illinois. Unlike Chu’s alarmist position, the
data show the opposite trend.

The Lunch

Steven Chu is out to lunch if
he thinks somehow the above trends will suddenly change and it will warm by
several degrees just because the climate models say so.

Holdren carefully selects his
data in order to misrepresent the trends.

For more on Chu and Holdren’s
lack of scientific understanding (as well as other Obama people) see: